Sword

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR MAX HASTINGS, A THRILLING BOTTOM-UP STORY OF THE MEN WHO INVADED SWORD BEACH ON D-DAY. Sword Beach was the north-easternmost of the five areas assaulted by the Anglo-American and Canadian armies on 6 June 1944. The battle zone on and behind Sword witnessed on 6 June some of the most dramatic and tumultuous scenes, the greatest human stories, of the entire war in the West embracing 30,000 paratroopers, infantry, commandos and of course aircrew and sailors not to mention the German and French participants. While the Eastern struggle was unremittingly bloody, between 1941 and 1944 the British and American armies had contributed relatively little to the crusade to destroy Nazism. No Russian or German soldier experienced the luxury granted to the British of having four years- and in the case of the US, thirty months- to prepare and train for a resumption of the continental campaign which had been abandoned in June 1940. On 6 June these men experienced, literally overnight, a transition from peace, from years of make-believe battle, to the whitest heat of war. In more than a few cases, the first shots which those men ever heard fired in anger were those which killed them. Also included are the previously little-known stories of the Free French troops, who suffered 60% losses in the first days of fighting. Although the core facts of Sword are familiar, the landings at D-Day were the supreme military achievement of the Western war. Max Hastings explores new angles and fresh personalities and has uncovered never-before seen letters from combatants to give readers a visceral sense of what it felt like to land (by beach, parachute or glider0 on Sword beach in 1944. It highlights a campaign that marked the beginning of the end of the war, vindication of the long resistance and sacrifices experienced by the British since 1940.